For coastal and island communities, climate change is not a distant threat: it is already reshaping how people fish, farm, and earn a living. On 4 August 2026, ASB brought together practitioners from three countries for the second session in its Community of Practice (CoP) series. A CoP, in simple terms, is a group of people who do similar work and meet regularly to compare notes. For ASB and its partners, that means turning individual project experiences into knowledge that can be adapted and replicated in other countries facing similar challenges. This CoP became a space for each partners to share what actually works, and what doesn’t, when working with communities to strengthen livelihoods that can withstand climate shocks. This session’s theme was “Climate-Sensitive Livelihoods,” and it featured teams from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Bangladesh.
The CoP series is part of the Global Program – Promoting regional approaches to inclusive and gender-responsive disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in South and Southeast Asia. The program is implemented by three organisations who presented: the People’s Initiative for Learning and Community Development (PILCD), together with partners from Catbalogan City and Samar State University in the Philippines; Jemari Sakato in Indonesia, working in the Mentawai Islands; and the Centre for Disability in Development (CDD) in Bangladesh. Despite working thousands of kilometres apart, all three described the same underlying problem: communities whose income depends directly on nature (the sea, the soil, or the weather) and who have few backup options when a storm, a flood, or a bad season hits.
The Philippines: Growing Mussels, Fish, and Sea Cucumbers Together
The team from Catbalogan City, working with PILCD and Samar State University, presented an approach called Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture, or IMTA. It’s a mouthful, but the idea behind it is fairly intuitive once explained.
Most fish farming today uses monoculture, raising just one species, like fish or shrimp, in one location. The problem is that waste from that single species (uneaten feed, droppings, excess nutrients) builds up in the water, degrading its quality and eventually harming the very animals being farmed, as well as the surrounding ecosystem. IMTA addresses this by farming several species together, chosen specifically because each one “cleans up” after another.
The Catbalogan system typically layers four types of organisms:
Fed species such as fish, which are the main product and also the main source of waste. Their leftover feed and waste come in two forms: solid organic particles and dissolved nutrients like nitrogen and ammonia.
Organic extractors, such as mussels, which filter the solid waste particles out of the water column.
Deposit feeders, such as sea cucumbers, which consume the heavier waste that settles on the sea floor.
Inorganic extractors, certain algae and plants, which absorb the dissolved nutrients and use them to grow, while also releasing oxygen back into the water.
The result, the team explained, is threefold. First, environmental remediation: by absorbing waste and excess nutrients, IMTA reduces the risk of harmful algal blooms and other pollution problems associated with monoculture. Second, economic resilience: farmers are no longer dependent on a single product, and instead generate income from several higher-value goods, such as premium fish, mussels, and sea cucumbers, at the same time. Third, more efficient use of space: the same stretch of coastal water produces more food and income per hectare than traditional single-species farming.
One centerpiece of the project is longline mussel culture, an alternative to the traditional bamboo raft (locally known as bangkuwang) that many communities have used for generations. Bamboo rafts are cheap but fragile: they are typically anchored close to shore, in shallow water, which limits water circulation, encourages sediment build-up, and leaves them highly exposed to storms and rough seas. Longline systems, by contrast, can be placed further out in deeper water, where stronger currents help the mussels grow faster and larger. The floats, often made from repurposed HDPE plastic containers, can be submerged during storms to reduce the risk of damage, something a fixed bamboo raft cannot do.
That flexibility mattered in practice. When the team tried to replicate the system in a nearby area called Calbayog using bamboo floaters, for the sake of being more eco-friendly, the setup could not be submerged and was destroyed by a typhoon in 2020. The version using plastic floaters, which could be lowered underwater during storms, survived far better. It’s a useful reminder that a technically “greener” material isn’t automatically the better choice if it can’t withstand the local hazard: the team ultimately had to balance ecological preference against storm resilience.
The project also pairs this aquaculture work with mangrove conservation, coral rehabilitation, and fish sanctuary protection, on the logic that a healthy ecosystem is the foundation the whole livelihood depends on: there is little point building a resilient fish farm in a degraded, unprotected bay. During the Q&A, one participant asked how the team selects locations to avoid contamination from nearby industry (heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and cadmium were mentioned as a concern). The answer: sites are chosen based on where communities already live and fish, in remote or island areas naturally distant from industrial zones: the approach is to improve what already exists rather than relocate people to a new area.
Indonesia: Turning Small Businesses into Climate Shock Absorbers
In the Mentawai Islands, off the west coast of Sumatra, Jemari Sakato is running a project that supports “climate-resilient villages,” an approach aligned with an Indonesian national program under the Ministry of Environment and Forestry that helps communities adapt to and mitigate climate change at the local level.
The project’s starting point was a participatory multi-risk assessment: rather than deciding for the community what problems mattered most, the project team and village government worked with residents to map out local hazards and existing capacities. From that process, villages developed their own community action plans, which consistently centered on three priorities: a flash-flood contingency plan, better management of clean water resources, and support for resilient micro, small, and medium enterprises (known locally as UMKM, or MSME in English).
A companion study, conducted with Islamic State University of Imam Bonjol, dug into why local livelihoods were so vulnerable. It found that communities relied heavily on agriculture without much in the way of modern management practices; that agricultural products were often processed and handled inefficiently; that market access was limited; and that people lacked access to technical training. Based on these findings, the study recommended diversifying household income sources using local food, promoting crop rotation and climate-resilient crop varieties, encouraging home gardens as a secondary income stream, and specifically boosting the involvement of women and persons with disabilities in local business networks.
On the ground, the team identified 34 small businesses, from processed snacks like cassava and yam chips, to small general stores (known as warung in Indonesia, similar to sari-sari stores in the Philippines), vegetable sellers, tailors, and craftspeople, concentrated in areas most exposed to hydrometeorological hazards such as floods and storms.
Several forms of support followed. Because fetching clean water is a time-consuming chore in these islands, the project worked to free up that time so it could go toward income-generating activity instead, including encouraging home-based businesses. Business owners received help drafting business continuity plans, essentially a playbook for what to do before, during, and after a disaster so operations can resume quickly. The project also introduced a community savings group, adapted from the Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) model, so members have a financial cushion to draw on after a disaster. And to build a longer-term support system, business owners are being connected to village-owned enterprises (BUMDes), which the project hopes will eventually manage the village’s clean water system as a business unit and serve as an ongoing “clinic” for the local business community, a place to get advice, build skills in climate-sensitive practices, and troubleshoot problems.
During the discussion, a participant asked how priorities are set among the 34 businesses supported. The team explained that priority goes to vulnerable groups located in disaster-prone areas with limited access to clean water. Businesses are also actively encouraged to develop a second, alternative income stream, so that if their main product line is disrupted, they have something to fall back on, rather than relying on a single business. Distance from markets remains a persistent challenge: Mentawai Island sits more than 160 kilometers from Padang, the nearest mainland city and primary market, and ferry disruptions during bad weather can cut off the supply of materials businesses need.
Bangladesh: Making Sure No One Is Left Behind
The Centre for Disability in Development (CDD), a Bangladeshi organization with roughly 30 years of experience working with persons with disabilities, presented its approach to inclusive, climate-smart livelihoods in the coastal districts of Rayenda and Southkhali Unions.
These are areas where saltwater intrusion, soil degradation, and cyclones are constant threats, problems that hit hardest for people who already face barriers to employment and market access, particularly persons with disabilities and vulnerable women. CDD’s project is built around a simple principle: climate resilience efforts fail if they leave the most marginalised people out.
The project trained around 75 community members directly, with the expectation that they would go on to inspire and inform roughly 150 more people in their wider community, a common approach in development work, where a smaller group of trained participants becomes a source of peer knowledge for their neighbors. Training covered practical, low-cost interventions: homestead gardening (growing vegetables at home, both for the family’s own food and for extra income) and vermicomposting (using worms to turn organic waste into fertilizer, which CDD supplied to five participating households). According to the team’s estimates, these two interventions alone can raise household income by around 20%. Additional livelihood options introduced included goat farming, duck and poultry rearing, and small trading businesses, with homestead gardening emphasized in coastal areas because it delivers both income and direct nutritional benefits: food the family can eat right away, not just sell.
Asked to explain the 20% income figure in more detail during the Q&A, the CDD team clarified that it comes from selling surplus produce after a household’s own needs are met. In other words, it is deliberately framed as alternative or side income, not a replacement for a family’s main livelihood. The intent is to build a cushion, not a single new dependency.
CDD was candid about the obstacles it still faces: recurring cyclones, freshwater scarcity, and the deeper structural problem that persons with disabilities remain a marginalized group with limited access to markets and investment. The team’s key lesson was the value of partnering directly with organizations run by persons with disabilities themselves, since these groups are best placed to advocate for their own community’s needs with local government and secure support beyond what any single project can offer.
That message was reinforced directly during the session by Suleman, president of a local self-help organization of persons with disabilities, who joined the call to thank ASB and CDD and to make a simple but pointed point: persons with disabilities are no less capable than anyone else in the community, and they have the same right to be heard, to have opinions valued, and to live with dignity. Programs like this one, he said, have given his community the training and orientation they needed to become more aware and prepared, while affirming that inclusion should never be treated as an afterthought.
What Ties These Three Projects Together
Even though the geography and the technical details differ sharply (mussel rafts in the Philippines, village savings groups in Indonesia, homestead gardens in Bangladesh), a few common threads ran through all three presentations.
Diversification matters more than any single technology. None of the three projects is betting on one silver-bullet solution. Instead, each is helping households build a portfolio of income sources, so that if one is disrupted by a storm, a bad season, or a market shock, another can carry the household through.
Resilient livelihoods depend on healthy ecosystems. Whether it’s mangroves and coral reefs in the Philippines or clean water sources in Indonesia, all three teams stressed that livelihood support cannot be separated from environmental protection: the ecosystem is the foundation the income depends on, not a separate concern.
Inclusion has to be deliberate. Women, people with disabilities, and other most-at-risk groups do not automatically benefit from a livelihood project unless it is specifically designed with them in mind, from CDD’s disability-inclusive approach to Jemari Sakato’s targeting of vulnerable groups and Indonesia’s push to include women in MSME networks.
“Resilience” is about continuity, not just higher income. As the Philippine team put it, climate-sensitive livelihood work isn’t only about generating more income: it’s about making sure income continues even when disaster strikes, and about communities having the financial and social tools (savings groups, business continuity plans, alternative income streams) to absorb a shock and recover.
Local context should shape the solution, not the other way around. Each project adapted its approach to fit what a community already does and already has: improving existing bamboo-raft fishing rather than introducing something entirely foreign, working with existing village institutions like BUMDes, or partnering with disability-led organizations that already have community trust.
The session closed with an open floor for questions and reflections from the roughly 100 participants attending from ASB offices and partner organisations across the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Nepal, a reminder that this exchange is part of an ongoing series, with further sessions planned to keep sharing lessons across country contexts as these climate-sensitive livelihood approaches continue to evolve.
